Eco-tourists … like dodos … just before elephants make paté:
… one killed; two injured
100 Replies to “Look Daddy … Cuddly Elephants”
idiots!!
Darwin Award candidates. Idiots is right!
Lack of respect; paid with a high price!
“But…but…but… they NEVER do that in the Walt Disney films!?!?”
Idiots. What did they THINK was going to happen if they got that close to a cow elephant and her calf?
Walt Disney would be proud of them.
This is what happens when parents entrust the education of their children to the collected works of Walt Disney.
First rule of “observing nature”:
DO NOT GET BETWEEN A MOTHER AND HER YOUNG!
I may not be from Africa, but everything I saw showed very little respect on behalf of the herd and an obvious ignorance of the aggressive behaviour exhibited by the animals upon exiting the water. I lay the blame directly at the feet of the “guides” as they should know better then to put the lives of the tourists in such direct danger.
Anyone want to start a pool on how many eco-tourists we feed to the bears this year?
Wooo!
Three minds in synchronicity.
This should be a leason for all..Wild animals kill and mame. Whether you are a naturalist or not.
Idiots of the highest degree.
Are these idiots related to the women who went to the North Pole or the Antartic, because it was warming, and ended up in -51 weather, and one losing her toes to frostbite.
Meh…no doubt Democrats killed by Elephants…too ironic 😉
“Are these idiots related to the women who went to the North Pole or the Antartic, because it was warming, and ended up in -51 weather, and one losing her toes to frostbite.”
Don’t be overly harsh, Mary…they were merely trying to reduce their “carbon footprint”… 🙂
“carbon footprint” … how about an elephant footprint?
Why do people want to make “friends” with animals in the wild??? Animals see everything as a predator, especially people gawking at them, with a camera pointed at them.
My instincts watching this, told me they were too close, and yet I wasn’t even “there”. What happened to following your instincts? Don’t people have them anymore???
*Crikey*
So do we now start a campaign against the elephants? The did after all kill an idiot,and idiots are suppossed to be protected by government!There is a word for these fools,but I can’t think of it right now.
Stupid is as stupid does… Getting around female elephants with youngsters, then hanging around while they are leaving the water, and the matriarch is assuming an aggressive pose (the ears moving forward). I’d hate to have these tour guides take people around hippos or rhinos (both have short fused tempers).
“My instincts watching this, told me they were too close”
No kidding. As soon as the elephants came out of the water flairing their ears, I would have been out of that boat and swimming the opposite direction.
I blame Global Warming.
😉
These folks could be of any political stripe or bent, and they could have cared nothing for Kyoto; whatever their affiliations, it made no difference to the elephants. “… one killed; two injured”
Normally I’m the first to howl at the folly of boneheads (especially leftards), but this is not unlike snickering at somebody nailed by a car while jaywalking.
These people could be parents, or anybody you might know. The survivors may one day watch this video, too.
Or read the comments on this thread.
C’mon, guys. I think this little display of schadenfreude is beneath most of the regulars on this blog.
mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm
That’s classless. Utterly classless. Do you hang around car accidents and make fun of the injured as well? People make bad decisions, it’s part of being human. It’s ghoulish to know a person’s final moments are being mocked by some faceless vulture half a world away.
I blame Global Warming
Darn, someone beat me to it.
In movie Jurassic Park they showed all the herbivores as friendly and pettable, and all carnivores as unrelentingly violent. And then there’s the real world…
We must not forget that Moonbats are called that partly because their “ideas” – or whatever we call their mental activities – are dangerous to THEIR health. In most instances, moonbat activities damage us as well as them. Here we see purest moonbattery.
Zookeepers, I have heard, consider polar bears and elephants to be the two most dangerous animals, because they are powerful, fast, smart, and a little unpredictable. But honestly, the ecotourists were very close to the elephants (if I were swimming I wouldn’t like them that close to me), and elephants are no doubt more vulnerable while swimming than on the land. Bad scene, for the elephants. The moonbats deserved everything they got.
…well I blame Bush. If it wasn’t for Global Warming the river wouldn’t be so high and those guys in the boat would be driving instead.
So there.
😉
Snuff films on SDA…no further comment necessary.
Good Lord, lberia, you’re a dick. I expect you to turn on the news tonight and, while watching video from Iraq, exclaim “Snuff films on TV…no further comment necessary”!
mhb I hear you but your compassion doesn’t remove the extreme naivety–to the point of arrogance, unintended as it was–of the anthropomorphists who mistake Nature for a Teddy Bear. Fools!
Caveat emptor–Buyer beware–is a good philosophy. But today’s entitled “adult toddlers” have been so brainwashed by politically correct cr–er, I mean, pap–that they have a totally false understanding of human and every other kind of nature. If one gets the first things wrong–as the modern metrosexual invariably does–everything else, sooner, I think, rather than later, goes off the rails.
Too bad for these silly people, who made the wrong choice. I’m surprised, actually, that some “nanny” didn’t stop them before they could do something so ignorant and dangerous.
Ironically, it’s the nannies–as in the Canadian nanny state–who have removed almost every ounce (gram?) of common sense from a critical mass of the populace: “It’s up to someone else to solve my problems before I make them.”
E.g., I know of a challenged, “viz. min.”–Sorry, UN, for my insensitivity!–student who blames every unfortunate occurrence on either “somebody” or “nobody”, as in, “Isn’t there somebody who can . . .?” or “Nobody did this or that.” The “somebody” or “nobody” he appeals to in the ether should actually be HIM but the system–not me!–allows him to blame these ghost people for his own utter lack of responsibility. And where did this come from? If one met this kid’s immature mother–a poster person for “adult toddler”, if ever there was one–who is supported and treated with kid gloves by the system, one would altogether understand.
(This is altogether politically incorrect to note. However, I HAVE noted that mainstream “adult” behaviour is approximating the kind of irresponsible shenanigans one used to associate only with marginalized, not terribly respected types of people. It seems that irresponsibility is becoming more and more “acceptable”. Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined it “Defining deviancy down”.)
Because of litigation–that damned and damnable Charter again!–school boards have regulated just about everything–wind chill too low? The kids (but never the teachers) get to stay in–so the kids are NOT ALLOWED to make decisions about anything of possible danger. Does this produce problem solvers and reasonable risk-takers? NO WAY! It produces glaze-eyed, gutless wimps, who are eminently malleable and prone to making ridiculous–even dangerous–magic thinking choices.
Sorry, mhb, but you sound like one of these hand wringing jellyfish. Yes, it’s very sad that this tragedy occurred. However, it was NOT inevitable and if the participants in this little river jaunt had respected the true nature of elephants with young, rather than indulging in their infantile and dangerous–yes, dangerous–fantasizing, this would not have happened.
Caveat emptor. In this stupid, over regulated age, would that we could!
P.S. Edward Stun(ned?), my post is for you too. You also “sound like . . . [a] hand wringing jellyfish”.
That’s why I don’t watch TV, Eeyore. I suppose you get a giddy thrill watching the last few seconds of someone’s life, followed by the smug self-satisfaction of knowing that you would never be caught doing anything stupid enough to get you killed.
The heck with John Paul, I think iberia is bucking for sainthood.
People can and often are stupid with a capital S. Some people cannot see that this video is actually making a very important point about wild animals being, well, wild. I’ve watched too many stupid people try to hug an elk or feed a bear and most will not learn.
Terrible that they died, but this is a perfect illustration as has been noted before of what happens when people “grow up” in a socialist state expecting others to look after them. They have no instincts or even the slightest grasp of right and wrong.
Timothy Treadwell, welfare moms, etc. The list goes on of people who chose to be ignorant of the dangers of life assuming that someone else has made a risk-free path for them.
Sorry Iberia. This is something that should be publicized and all people should be made aware that wildlife is not a bunch of cuddly disney creatures. Not something that most people with common sense need to be told, but it is something that leftards need to have repeated to them over and over again for their own safety.
Hey, Iberia. Why should anyone care for the lives of people who don’t take their own seriously?
What these folks did was so far beyond bone-headed that I struggle to find an appropriately descriptive word.
These people made an error in getting too close to a large animal with young. And they paid for it with their own lives and the lives of their loved ones.
Why make this sad incident an occasion for self satisfaction and levity? Anyone here made a really dumb move in traffic recently? If so then ask God why they died and you didn’t.
I can’t believe they didn’t notice the one Elephant kick sand at them as a warning , chalk this one up as part of cleaning the Gene-pool
of the idiots with no survival skills or Fright/Flight/fight auto response system which the Phants displayed .
Reminds me of Rachel Corrie and the bulldozer.
In fairness, I don’t think this one can be blamed on the modern nanny state. One of the main attractions in Banff a hundred years ago was feeding (and teasing) the bears.
This is more likely an illustration of the difference between urban dwellers and rural hicks. If your only experience with living animals larger than a shi tzu comes from the zoo, then you have no real idea of the concept of keeping a safe distance, or of what a threat display looks like, and of how FAST animals can move when angry or frightned.
A few years ago I ran into some Japanese tourists trying to hand feed a deer. When I tried to explain what a bad idea that was, they couldn’t comprehend the idea that bambi could be dangerous. The problem wasn’t language so much as experience – they had no frame of reference to understand that deer have a very nervous disposition, sharp hooves, and can kick forwards.
If you have that frame of reference, that video is a slow motion trainwreck – way too close to babies, way to close to animals in a vulnerable situation, circling those animals the same way a predator would, repeated refusals to back away when warned off by a number of animals. If a strange dog did those things to you and your child, what are the odds you’d try to whack it with a stick? I bet the answer would be different depending on how urban you are.
Same difference really with the issue of gun control. If you live your entire life in the city, it would be hard to imagine how a normal person could have a legitimate use for a gun. If you live in Churchill, Manatoba however …
*****Anyone here made a really dumb move in traffic recently? If so then ask God why they died and you didn’t.*******
maybe you could post gOD’s phone number so I can call and ask, as I don’t see no gOD in the directory!!
This is par for the course with city folks who didn’t grow up around wild animals, as I did.
Rule of thumb: stay the hell out of the way, at a safe distance, from any wild animal bigger than a squirrel.
About 30 years ago, my mother and younger brother were traveling between McBride and Prince George, on the Yellowhead highway. They pulled over at a rest stop. They noticed a couple of bears sniffing around the cars and garbage cans. One couple thought it was a great photo op, so, when a bear approached their car, they began snapping pictures.
Then the woman held her infant through the side window, head first, while the man gleefully snapped pics of the bear licking the baby’s head. Mom, who was raised in the country, damned near had heart failure.
Fortunately, nothing happened,the bear wandered off, but the actions of that ignorant couple still astounds me to this day.
Hey, lberia and mhb: lighten up. There are far more people being killed by the Islamofascists than got killed by the maurauding elephant who, rightfully, felt his/her kind were being threatened.
lberia and mhb: are you objecting to Al-Qaeda’s savagery and violence? After all, people are being killed, and often innocent people, not idiots who need their heads read. If you have a problem with this video, how about the footage that ISN’T shown by our MSM of innocent Afghanis being taken out by Islamofascist terrorists? How about being upset about our own Canadian soldiers who are being killed by these terrorists?
Your inverted priorities–I know, I know, making priorities is so difficult for liberals–is predictable but tiresome.
It looks to me like the people in the boat were tourists to some African country, with “guides” paddling the boat. What the H*ll were the guides thinking? As the boat began to gain on the elephants and then actually went in front of them, I thought, “now you’ve done it.”
‘Guess my instincts that they should have stayed behind the elephants and way out in the water when the elephants were leaving the river were right.
RIP the person who was killed.
I find it hard to believe that someone out of this group on the boat didn’t have the good scense to get them out of danger.
There have been many shows available to watch over the years such as, National Geografic, Learning Channel, DIscovery Channel, Any of the many wildlife shows that have been on TV over the years.
Or were/are these people just to smart for their own good.
I don’t care what anyone has to say. This is NOT like a car accident.
These people were just plan stupid.
“According to the National Geographic Channel documentary Elephant Rage, some 500 people are killed by elephant attacks each year. Such attacks are becoming increasingly common, researchers say.” http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0603_050603_elephants.html
Any guess how many are killed by sharks a year? What would you call an eco-tourist That decided to swim with the sharks?
Bart F – Compare to a dumb move in traffic … gimme a break. If you must have cars in your example, at least have them playing chicken.
Those of us who hunt and kill critters for sport watch this and have the hair stand up on the back our necks. The elephants did their job … they warned … they tossed sand … they bluffed.
“Gett the F out of here” they said … loud and clear … “especially after you harrassed us in the water!”
As a human predator (hunter), I can say that watching this made me absolutely cringe, I’d have turned my skin inside out to get away with the first ear flapping glance from “mom”.
Now, compare that to the guides. Whoever they were, they were fakes, because anyone who’s been around dangerous game would’ve read the signs instantly… hell, anyone with one ounce of instinct would’ve.
And as far as the tourist(s) … simple post-modern road kill expecting to get what she paid for … exciting eco-tour in Africa … “Come canoe the so-and-so River of cute-little-black-kids-in-poverty Land … we’ll show you African animals … like you’ve never seen them before … no fences … wild … maybe even a lion kill”
The world is being drowned in “eco-tourists” longing to escape their concrete jungle homes and get really close to Tarzan’s world … complete with “quaint” poor people in huts … drop in for a week; get a little dirty; maybe a mosquito bite or two; then back home to Chapters and Espresso.
This video should be standard viewing on “Lonely Planet”.
Darn. I guess Gaia isn’t the all loving spook we though she was.These people found life as it is.To bad it isn’t to the socialists liking.
I stand by my nanny state comments.
whoevr, you sound like a kind, pretty reasonable sort. But I don’t buy your excuses for these people. I don’t think it’s just an “urban” thing, though the rise of urban living and our distance from nature–not shared by our ancestors–is most certainly a factor.
We’ve tried to tame both nature and downgrade evil–see D. P. Moynihan–which is a very foolish thing to do. In fact, we invert the nature of evil: abortion’s no problem but killing baby seals or whales is OUT. When a whole society does this, we’re in trouble. The very unwise choice shown on this video–“Hey, isn’t this fu . . .” THUD! WHAP!–is, IMO, just a symptom of the increasing amount of magic thinking that a critical mass of MODERN–not just urban–entitled, nanny state types are prone too. And, as I said, they’ll probably sue the travel agent back home.
After letting them off the hook, you then write, “If you have that frame of reference [ignorant of the danger of big wild animals], that video is a slow motion trainwreck – way too close to babies, way to close to animals in a vulnerable situation, circling those animals the same way a predator would, repeated refusals to back away when warned off by a number of animals. If a strange dog did those things to you and your child, what are the odds you’d try to whack it with a stick?” Your words demonstrate that these people were pretty bone-headed, despite all kinds of warnings.
So, I can’t understand why you reject the reason I’ve posited for such obtuseness. I don’t think my hypothesis contradicts your observation about these people’s behavior in any way.
But maybe you just think I’m being too hard on them. Too bad they weren’t harder on themselves. If they’d used their brains, rather than going into automatic pilot anthropomorphism and emotionalism–“Oh look. HOW cute!!”–altogether encouraged and even promoted by the politically correct, magic thinking nanny state mode of (un)consciousness, the dead (RIP) would probably still be alive and the injured still enjoying their holiday.
Forrest Gump was right: “Stupid is as stupid does.” And, yes, we’re all stupid sometimes. But I’ve noticed an exponential increase in stupidity about a lot of serious issues–e.g., discipline of our kids–in the last few decades: just when the tentacles of the nanny state have multiplied in both number and scope. I think there’s a connection here.
Obviously the elephant was corruptyed by some human pollutant, just like those loveable bears in Canada.
What I noticed was that EVERY adult elephant, as it exited the water, stopped and faced the “oh, that’s awesome” hippies, and in a very threatening manner.
It appears that one decided that these hippies needed some learning.
For those who are annoyed, upset or in any way opposed to the laughing at this video, let me explain.
We on the right are constantly berated by eco-babblers, tree-huggers and whale-watchers about our lack of concern for the natural environment.
We see here such an eco-tourist (Oh, that’s SO awesonme) meeting reality, which is something us right-wingers respect. Thus we understand that big animals and carnivores are dangerous, no matter how cuddly they look. We also know that, in some situations, we are not at the top of the food chain.
We laugh because we see delusional people suffering the ultimate price for their delusion. It is poetic; sad, yes; but poetic.
I wonder if we can see the video after May turns into a Grizzly and mauls Dion?
Naw…just fooling!!
Hey Cjunk, you missed “maybe even flattened by an elephant”
idiots!!
Darwin Award candidates. Idiots is right!
Lack of respect; paid with a high price!
“But…but…but… they NEVER do that in the Walt Disney films!?!?”
Idiots. What did they THINK was going to happen if they got that close to a cow elephant and her calf?
Walt Disney would be proud of them.
This is what happens when parents entrust the education of their children to the collected works of Walt Disney.
First rule of “observing nature”:
DO NOT GET BETWEEN A MOTHER AND HER YOUNG!
I may not be from Africa, but everything I saw showed very little respect on behalf of the herd and an obvious ignorance of the aggressive behaviour exhibited by the animals upon exiting the water. I lay the blame directly at the feet of the “guides” as they should know better then to put the lives of the tourists in such direct danger.
Anyone want to start a pool on how many eco-tourists we feed to the bears this year?
Wooo!
Three minds in synchronicity.
This should be a leason for all..Wild animals kill and mame. Whether you are a naturalist or not.
Idiots of the highest degree.
Are these idiots related to the women who went to the North Pole or the Antartic, because it was warming, and ended up in -51 weather, and one losing her toes to frostbite.
Meh…no doubt Democrats killed by Elephants…too ironic 😉
“Are these idiots related to the women who went to the North Pole or the Antartic, because it was warming, and ended up in -51 weather, and one losing her toes to frostbite.”
Don’t be overly harsh, Mary…they were merely trying to reduce their “carbon footprint”… 🙂
“carbon footprint” … how about an elephant footprint?
Why do people want to make “friends” with animals in the wild??? Animals see everything as a predator, especially people gawking at them, with a camera pointed at them.
My instincts watching this, told me they were too close, and yet I wasn’t even “there”. What happened to following your instincts? Don’t people have them anymore???
*Crikey*
So do we now start a campaign against the elephants? The did after all kill an idiot,and idiots are suppossed to be protected by government!There is a word for these fools,but I can’t think of it right now.
Stupid is as stupid does… Getting around female elephants with youngsters, then hanging around while they are leaving the water, and the matriarch is assuming an aggressive pose (the ears moving forward). I’d hate to have these tour guides take people around hippos or rhinos (both have short fused tempers).
“My instincts watching this, told me they were too close”
No kidding. As soon as the elephants came out of the water flairing their ears, I would have been out of that boat and swimming the opposite direction.
I blame Global Warming.
😉
These folks could be of any political stripe or bent, and they could have cared nothing for Kyoto; whatever their affiliations, it made no difference to the elephants.
“… one killed; two injured”
Normally I’m the first to howl at the folly of boneheads (especially leftards), but this is not unlike snickering at somebody nailed by a car while jaywalking.
These people could be parents, or anybody you might know. The survivors may one day watch this video, too.
Or read the comments on this thread.
C’mon, guys. I think this little display of schadenfreude is beneath most of the regulars on this blog.
mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm
That’s classless. Utterly classless. Do you hang around car accidents and make fun of the injured as well? People make bad decisions, it’s part of being human. It’s ghoulish to know a person’s final moments are being mocked by some faceless vulture half a world away.
I blame Global Warming
Darn, someone beat me to it.
In movie Jurassic Park they showed all the herbivores as friendly and pettable, and all carnivores as unrelentingly violent. And then there’s the real world…
We must not forget that Moonbats are called that partly because their “ideas” – or whatever we call their mental activities – are dangerous to THEIR health. In most instances, moonbat activities damage us as well as them. Here we see purest moonbattery.
Zookeepers, I have heard, consider polar bears and elephants to be the two most dangerous animals, because they are powerful, fast, smart, and a little unpredictable. But honestly, the ecotourists were very close to the elephants (if I were swimming I wouldn’t like them that close to me), and elephants are no doubt more vulnerable while swimming than on the land. Bad scene, for the elephants. The moonbats deserved everything they got.
…well I blame Bush. If it wasn’t for Global Warming the river wouldn’t be so high and those guys in the boat would be driving instead.
So there.
😉
Snuff films on SDA…no further comment necessary.
Good Lord, lberia, you’re a dick. I expect you to turn on the news tonight and, while watching video from Iraq, exclaim “Snuff films on TV…no further comment necessary”!
mhb I hear you but your compassion doesn’t remove the extreme naivety–to the point of arrogance, unintended as it was–of the anthropomorphists who mistake Nature for a Teddy Bear. Fools!
Caveat emptor–Buyer beware–is a good philosophy. But today’s entitled “adult toddlers” have been so brainwashed by politically correct cr–er, I mean, pap–that they have a totally false understanding of human and every other kind of nature. If one gets the first things wrong–as the modern metrosexual invariably does–everything else, sooner, I think, rather than later, goes off the rails.
Too bad for these silly people, who made the wrong choice. I’m surprised, actually, that some “nanny” didn’t stop them before they could do something so ignorant and dangerous.
Ironically, it’s the nannies–as in the Canadian nanny state–who have removed almost every ounce (gram?) of common sense from a critical mass of the populace: “It’s up to someone else to solve my problems before I make them.”
E.g., I know of a challenged, “viz. min.”–Sorry, UN, for my insensitivity!–student who blames every unfortunate occurrence on either “somebody” or “nobody”, as in, “Isn’t there somebody who can . . .?” or “Nobody did this or that.” The “somebody” or “nobody” he appeals to in the ether should actually be HIM but the system–not me!–allows him to blame these ghost people for his own utter lack of responsibility. And where did this come from? If one met this kid’s immature mother–a poster person for “adult toddler”, if ever there was one–who is supported and treated with kid gloves by the system, one would altogether understand.
(This is altogether politically incorrect to note. However, I HAVE noted that mainstream “adult” behaviour is approximating the kind of irresponsible shenanigans one used to associate only with marginalized, not terribly respected types of people. It seems that irresponsibility is becoming more and more “acceptable”. Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined it “Defining deviancy down”.)
Because of litigation–that damned and damnable Charter again!–school boards have regulated just about everything–wind chill too low? The kids (but never the teachers) get to stay in–so the kids are NOT ALLOWED to make decisions about anything of possible danger. Does this produce problem solvers and reasonable risk-takers? NO WAY! It produces glaze-eyed, gutless wimps, who are eminently malleable and prone to making ridiculous–even dangerous–magic thinking choices.
Sorry, mhb, but you sound like one of these hand wringing jellyfish. Yes, it’s very sad that this tragedy occurred. However, it was NOT inevitable and if the participants in this little river jaunt had respected the true nature of elephants with young, rather than indulging in their infantile and dangerous–yes, dangerous–fantasizing, this would not have happened.
Caveat emptor. In this stupid, over regulated age, would that we could!
P.S. Edward Stun(ned?), my post is for you too. You also “sound like . . . [a] hand wringing jellyfish”.
That’s why I don’t watch TV, Eeyore. I suppose you get a giddy thrill watching the last few seconds of someone’s life, followed by the smug self-satisfaction of knowing that you would never be caught doing anything stupid enough to get you killed.
The heck with John Paul, I think iberia is bucking for sainthood.
People can and often are stupid with a capital S. Some people cannot see that this video is actually making a very important point about wild animals being, well, wild. I’ve watched too many stupid people try to hug an elk or feed a bear and most will not learn.
Terrible that they died, but this is a perfect illustration as has been noted before of what happens when people “grow up” in a socialist state expecting others to look after them. They have no instincts or even the slightest grasp of right and wrong.
Timothy Treadwell, welfare moms, etc. The list goes on of people who chose to be ignorant of the dangers of life assuming that someone else has made a risk-free path for them.
Sorry Iberia. This is something that should be publicized and all people should be made aware that wildlife is not a bunch of cuddly disney creatures. Not something that most people with common sense need to be told, but it is something that leftards need to have repeated to them over and over again for their own safety.
Hey, Iberia. Why should anyone care for the lives of people who don’t take their own seriously?
What these folks did was so far beyond bone-headed that I struggle to find an appropriately descriptive word.
These people made an error in getting too close to a large animal with young. And they paid for it with their own lives and the lives of their loved ones.
Why make this sad incident an occasion for self satisfaction and levity? Anyone here made a really dumb move in traffic recently? If so then ask God why they died and you didn’t.
I can’t believe they didn’t notice the one Elephant kick sand at them as a warning , chalk this one up as part of cleaning the Gene-pool
of the idiots with no survival skills or Fright/Flight/fight auto response system which the Phants displayed .
Reminds me of Rachel Corrie and the bulldozer.
In fairness, I don’t think this one can be blamed on the modern nanny state. One of the main attractions in Banff a hundred years ago was feeding (and teasing) the bears.
This is more likely an illustration of the difference between urban dwellers and rural hicks. If your only experience with living animals larger than a shi tzu comes from the zoo, then you have no real idea of the concept of keeping a safe distance, or of what a threat display looks like, and of how FAST animals can move when angry or frightned.
A few years ago I ran into some Japanese tourists trying to hand feed a deer. When I tried to explain what a bad idea that was, they couldn’t comprehend the idea that bambi could be dangerous. The problem wasn’t language so much as experience – they had no frame of reference to understand that deer have a very nervous disposition, sharp hooves, and can kick forwards.
If you have that frame of reference, that video is a slow motion trainwreck – way too close to babies, way to close to animals in a vulnerable situation, circling those animals the same way a predator would, repeated refusals to back away when warned off by a number of animals. If a strange dog did those things to you and your child, what are the odds you’d try to whack it with a stick? I bet the answer would be different depending on how urban you are.
Same difference really with the issue of gun control. If you live your entire life in the city, it would be hard to imagine how a normal person could have a legitimate use for a gun. If you live in Churchill, Manatoba however …
*****Anyone here made a really dumb move in traffic recently? If so then ask God why they died and you didn’t.*******
maybe you could post gOD’s phone number so I can call and ask, as I don’t see no gOD in the directory!!
This is par for the course with city folks who didn’t grow up around wild animals, as I did.
Rule of thumb: stay the hell out of the way, at a safe distance, from any wild animal bigger than a squirrel.
About 30 years ago, my mother and younger brother were traveling between McBride and Prince George, on the Yellowhead highway. They pulled over at a rest stop. They noticed a couple of bears sniffing around the cars and garbage cans. One couple thought it was a great photo op, so, when a bear approached their car, they began snapping pictures.
Then the woman held her infant through the side window, head first, while the man gleefully snapped pics of the bear licking the baby’s head. Mom, who was raised in the country, damned near had heart failure.
Fortunately, nothing happened,the bear wandered off, but the actions of that ignorant couple still astounds me to this day.
Hey, lberia and mhb: lighten up. There are far more people being killed by the Islamofascists than got killed by the maurauding elephant who, rightfully, felt his/her kind were being threatened.
lberia and mhb: are you objecting to Al-Qaeda’s savagery and violence? After all, people are being killed, and often innocent people, not idiots who need their heads read. If you have a problem with this video, how about the footage that ISN’T shown by our MSM of innocent Afghanis being taken out by Islamofascist terrorists? How about being upset about our own Canadian soldiers who are being killed by these terrorists?
Your inverted priorities–I know, I know, making priorities is so difficult for liberals–is predictable but tiresome.
It looks to me like the people in the boat were tourists to some African country, with “guides” paddling the boat. What the H*ll were the guides thinking? As the boat began to gain on the elephants and then actually went in front of them, I thought, “now you’ve done it.”
‘Guess my instincts that they should have stayed behind the elephants and way out in the water when the elephants were leaving the river were right.
RIP the person who was killed.
I find it hard to believe that someone out of this group on the boat didn’t have the good scense to get them out of danger.
There have been many shows available to watch over the years such as, National Geografic, Learning Channel, DIscovery Channel, Any of the many wildlife shows that have been on TV over the years.
Or were/are these people just to smart for their own good.
I don’t care what anyone has to say. This is NOT like a car accident.
These people were just plan stupid.
“According to the National Geographic Channel documentary Elephant Rage, some 500 people are killed by elephant attacks each year. Such attacks are becoming increasingly common, researchers say.”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0603_050603_elephants.html
Any guess how many are killed by sharks a year? What would you call an eco-tourist That decided to swim with the sharks?
Bart F – Compare to a dumb move in traffic … gimme a break. If you must have cars in your example, at least have them playing chicken.
Those of us who hunt and kill critters for sport watch this and have the hair stand up on the back our necks. The elephants did their job … they warned … they tossed sand … they bluffed.
“Gett the F out of here” they said … loud and clear … “especially after you harrassed us in the water!”
As a human predator (hunter), I can say that watching this made me absolutely cringe, I’d have turned my skin inside out to get away with the first ear flapping glance from “mom”.
Now, compare that to the guides. Whoever they were, they were fakes, because anyone who’s been around dangerous game would’ve read the signs instantly… hell, anyone with one ounce of instinct would’ve.
And as far as the tourist(s) … simple post-modern road kill expecting to get what she paid for … exciting eco-tour in Africa … “Come canoe the so-and-so River of cute-little-black-kids-in-poverty Land … we’ll show you African animals … like you’ve never seen them before … no fences … wild … maybe even a lion kill”
The world is being drowned in “eco-tourists” longing to escape their concrete jungle homes and get really close to Tarzan’s world … complete with “quaint” poor people in huts … drop in for a week; get a little dirty; maybe a mosquito bite or two; then back home to Chapters and Espresso.
This video should be standard viewing on “Lonely Planet”.
Darn. I guess Gaia isn’t the all loving spook we though she was.These people found life as it is.To bad it isn’t to the socialists liking.
I stand by my nanny state comments.
whoevr, you sound like a kind, pretty reasonable sort. But I don’t buy your excuses for these people. I don’t think it’s just an “urban” thing, though the rise of urban living and our distance from nature–not shared by our ancestors–is most certainly a factor.
We’ve tried to tame both nature and downgrade evil–see D. P. Moynihan–which is a very foolish thing to do. In fact, we invert the nature of evil: abortion’s no problem but killing baby seals or whales is OUT. When a whole society does this, we’re in trouble. The very unwise choice shown on this video–“Hey, isn’t this fu . . .” THUD! WHAP!–is, IMO, just a symptom of the increasing amount of magic thinking that a critical mass of MODERN–not just urban–entitled, nanny state types are prone too. And, as I said, they’ll probably sue the travel agent back home.
After letting them off the hook, you then write, “If you have that frame of reference [ignorant of the danger of big wild animals], that video is a slow motion trainwreck – way too close to babies, way to close to animals in a vulnerable situation, circling those animals the same way a predator would, repeated refusals to back away when warned off by a number of animals. If a strange dog did those things to you and your child, what are the odds you’d try to whack it with a stick?” Your words demonstrate that these people were pretty bone-headed, despite all kinds of warnings.
So, I can’t understand why you reject the reason I’ve posited for such obtuseness. I don’t think my hypothesis contradicts your observation about these people’s behavior in any way.
But maybe you just think I’m being too hard on them. Too bad they weren’t harder on themselves. If they’d used their brains, rather than going into automatic pilot anthropomorphism and emotionalism–“Oh look. HOW cute!!”–altogether encouraged and even promoted by the politically correct, magic thinking nanny state mode of (un)consciousness, the dead (RIP) would probably still be alive and the injured still enjoying their holiday.
Forrest Gump was right: “Stupid is as stupid does.” And, yes, we’re all stupid sometimes. But I’ve noticed an exponential increase in stupidity about a lot of serious issues–e.g., discipline of our kids–in the last few decades: just when the tentacles of the nanny state have multiplied in both number and scope. I think there’s a connection here.
Obviously the elephant was corruptyed by some human pollutant, just like those loveable bears in Canada.
What I noticed was that EVERY adult elephant, as it exited the water, stopped and faced the “oh, that’s awesome” hippies, and in a very threatening manner.
It appears that one decided that these hippies needed some learning.
For those who are annoyed, upset or in any way opposed to the laughing at this video, let me explain.
We on the right are constantly berated by eco-babblers, tree-huggers and whale-watchers about our lack of concern for the natural environment.
We see here such an eco-tourist (Oh, that’s SO awesonme) meeting reality, which is something us right-wingers respect. Thus we understand that big animals and carnivores are dangerous, no matter how cuddly they look. We also know that, in some situations, we are not at the top of the food chain.
We laugh because we see delusional people suffering the ultimate price for their delusion. It is poetic; sad, yes; but poetic.
I wonder if we can see the video after May turns into a Grizzly and mauls Dion?
Naw…just fooling!!
Hey Cjunk, you missed “maybe even flattened by an elephant”